by Marc Secchia
The eggs inside his stomach felt as if they had just come alive. Asturbar pressed a hand against his gut. Ouch. That was not an entirely comfortable, nor a comforting sensation. “Shh.”
Why did he say that? Nyahi looked sharply at him. “Asturbar?”
Alright, out with it.
“My theft,” he admitted.
She peered at him, the corners of her eyes crinkling with amusement. “Let me guess. Big mouth, maybe I should put it to use?”
“Azhukazi was chasing a treasure,” he growled and glowered at her, irked by her mischievous expression, “and there was no way in – well, minus various execrations I could throw in right now, there was no way I was letting that foul, bone-licking spawn of a murgalizard get his paws on something that might just make the Island-World worse for everyone.”
That declaration earned him an impassioned reward. Wow!
“Nearly got us all killed, though. The odd thing was …” Asturbar described that strange incident in the hall afterward, when the Iolite Blue had tried to read his mind, failed, and then in a single breath both complimented him as an honoured enemy and signed his death warrant. Classic draconic double play, as subtle as it was masterful.
Nyahi prodded his gut, making him suck it in self-consciously. She laughed and slipped her hand inside his shirt. “You are not fat, silly. Mmm, are these muscles or are they boulders?” He yelped something unintelligible. “Sooooo … what’s stashed inside, may I ask?”
“The Jewels of Instashi.”
“The … what?”
Another day, another ride. This time Asturbar discovered he had five legs and a dozen arms, and could look around every possible degree of the compass at the same time as they blasted around the cavern together, riding the torrent of her fury. Glimmers of rainbow light swirled about him in a kaleidoscopic galaxy as they traversed the chambers of the cavern, and it came to him with dizzying clarity that this must somehow be the heart of these Islands, its soul and its pulse, or at least the power source upon which so much life depended.
At length the unchained beast dumped him and stood upon his throat, roaring, Explain yourself! Explain what you have done!
She spoke Dragonish! Even a neophyte in Dragon lore like him knew what that meant.
But she was choking him, and this time, a power-hungry madness suffused her eyes. Feral? Perhaps. In this form Nyahi had the appearance of a huge Dragoness of liquid lavender fires, her signature colour, but for the first time he dully recognised that this was another expression of her skin colour. She was shades off a silvery teal-blue, more toward the purple spectrum. Why he was even thinking this right now? Asturbar flexed his arms, and pitted his strength against the beast.
To his shock, she actually lifted. Unless he was greatly mistaken, she had to be a twenty tonne Dragoness in this form, but he actually lifted a paw upon which she had rested a considerable fraction of her weight. For long seconds they wrestled, fire for fire and anger for anger, before he abruptly rolled aside and her paw slammed down beside him. GRRRAAARRGGHH! White-hot fires poured over him, molten and beautiful, and … not burning?
She choked off her attack with a sob. “Oh … oh can I not stop … this is a curse! I am cursed!”
Panting, he said, “Why, Nyahi? What did I do this time?”
The Dragoness collapsed, shaking the caverns with the spent, frustrated, distraught expression of her mental state. “Boots, for all that I care about you … I can’t prevent this cursed form from taking over and destroying that which I hold most dear! Look, the stupid jewels – the Jewels of Instashi –” she pronounced the word very differently to how he had, een-stuh-shee “– they were a family heirloom stolen from us years ago by none other than your precious Marshal Chanbar. I’ve met the man on numberless occasions. He’s my uncle!”
He eyed her. She eyed him. Chanbar was her uncle? Grieving gizzards, the plot thickened! He had known Chanbar hailed from the Northeast, but from Yazê-a-Kûz, that most mysterious and impenetrable of realms? Fate didn’t just serve up coincidences like this, did it? Not for no reason. Asturbar shivered.
The Dragoness whispered, “I’m sorry. So sorry. Did I hurt you?”
“Actually, no. Which is something we need to discuss. Tell me about these Jewels.”
Her paw reached out toward him, quivering as if she longed to touch him, but dared not. “They’re dangerous. Well, reputed to be dangerous. Or alive.”
“Alive? How, exactly?”
“We learned all the legends when I was a little girl. Some say that the Jewels are really dragonets’ eggs –”
“Too large,” he said. “What, so they’re waiting a hundred years for some mystical event to change the Island-World and then they’ll hatch? Not a likely story.”
Watching her emotions flicker through those extraordinary eyes introduced a whole new world of wobbly to his knees. The fires whirling beneath the translucent, crystalline surfaces of her fire-eyes were a-whirl with incredibly complex patterns, colours and movement, expressing emotions both familiar and alien to him. Dragonkind were so different to Humans, creatures of fire and magic based on a fundamentally different physiology and psyche to Humans. Her initial smoky-orange flares of annoyance mellowed into brighter turquoise and citrine colours, apparently amusement of the sizzling and decidedly overwhelming sort.
She clarified, “You stuffed them down your gullet, Boots?”
“With some difficulty,” he said, trying to sound dignified. He failed. “There was duress. I was under attack. Nowhere else to hide them since the Iolite Blue was busy asking lots of interesting questions. Point of the talon and all that. Tell me, and please don’t take this the wrong way this time, because I’ve already apologised in advance, but you are not, as far as you are aware, a Chaos Beast?”
The purring of her belly fires reached a marrow-vibrating pitch.
“You grew up as a girl?”
“A Human girl,” she snarled through her fangs, “to my best knowledge.”
“In Yazê-a-Kûz?”
“Yes. Where’s this leading, Asturbar? I’m really, really sorry I tried to flame you, but since you already have no hair …”
He chuckled dutifully. Despite that she made a striking Dragoness, there was that teensy matter of her being terrifyingly unstable. “Just a couple more questions. When did you discover this power? Was it always present, or –”
“My fourteenth birthday. I turned into a pretty lavender plant at a grand ball held in my honour. My father is the ruler of Yazê-a-Kûz … I guess I haven’t told you the whole story, have I? When my other uncle, the one I eventually killed, tried to drag me off discreetly, I thought he was trying to assault my person. He was that kind of man, you see. Liked young girls sitting on his lap just a little too much. Nobody, and I mean nobody, trusted him. So I sort of … changed again, and … uh. You know. Bloody and messy … end. Which gave the game away to a thousand guests.”
“Ruddy good riddance, in that case,” Asturbar interrupted.
“Well, I’m not as accustomed to murder as –” Nyahi hung her head. “Sorry.”
He touched her paw. “It’s alright. My turn to guess. They tried locking you in a dungeon, training you out of this affliction, consulting the best medical advice, looking up every quack and failed Enchanter or Healer Dragon around the Isles …”
“Yes. All of that. More. Nothing worked.”
“No,” he said softly, “because the magic’s innate. Mother or father, Nyahi?”
“Who? What?”
“Who’s the Shapeshifter?”
“Neither. What are you saying?” She stared at him as if a large cockroach had perched upon his head. Asturbar resisted the urge to slap that non-existent creature. “They asked around – a lot. Our House has many resources. This power isn’t any kind of Shapeshifting known beneath the suns. It’s a curse. It’s evil.”
“I disagree, partly – and you are not evil. Expunge that ridiculous thought at once.”
Her sto
ry was only just beginning to percolate into his mind and make connections; some to be marvelled at, some to make an Azingloriax warrior blench. She was the daughter of a ruler – the ruler, if he had heard correctly – of only the largest, richest, most powerful and most aloof Island-realm in Wyldaroon, and probably a goodly slice of Herimor to boot. Even if they achieved the impossible by returning to civilisation, he would rather not have both the Mistral Fires and the Uxâtate himself breathing down his heiress-stealing neck. Not to speak of what had transpired since. One broken bed, case in point. He rather suspected the Uxâtate might take exception to how Asturbar had gleefully besmirched his daughter’s royal honour.
Not that she had minded, exactly …
The fiery flare tenor of the Dragoness’ gaze suggested he had better make his point, forthwith.
He said, “I suspect your mother may have been naughty, or there might be latent capability somewhere in your bloodline – no?” They were watching each other very closely now, the Azingloriax and the … well, now she was a silvery, oversized dragonet of some four feet in wingspan, a form he recognised from before. “So, to Asturbar’s theory. Your magic is innately chaotic. That initially led me to believe that you were a Chaos Beast. However, we have strong evidence to the contrary. Two main points. You display a single stable form to which you regularly return – the Human manifestation. That, together with your instinctive command of the Dragonish language, is a classic hallmark of a Shapeshifter Dragoness.”
“I do not –”
I beg to differ, bright-scales.
The dragonet shut her fangs, and kept them that way. Whomp! She returned once more to the fire-breathing leviathan. Massively beautiful armoured scales. Scything talons. Mesmerising eyes, and a forge’s wealth of flames licking between her fangs that he would rather not be mesmerised by, thank you kindly. Asturbar beat off an urge to pull down half of the Island behind him as he fled at the speed of a hurrying comet.
He said, “I had to learn Dragonish. Were you ever taught?”
Shake of the head.
Actually, he remembered now, Yazê-a-Kûz was famously unwelcoming to the Dragonkind. Better and better.
Asturbar boomed, “Excellent! Born Human, grew up Human, came into your powers around adolescence. Sound anything but Shapeshifter to you?” Another headshake. There was something so woebegone about a twenty-tonne girlfriend wagging her head like that, he almost laughed. Almost, but that it might have been his last laugh. “Therefore, I propose that you are a Shapeshifter gifted with Chaos magic.”
“Gifted?” she roared, making the mercenary half-duck. “Grief, you don’t half choose your words, soldier! Nonetheless, this theory sounds vaguely plausible. Do carry on.”
“Well, that was it. Ergo, you are a Chaos Shifter.”
“No. There’s no such thing.”
He threw up his hands. “You just agreed with me!”
“I’m a woman. I can agree and disagree at the same time and still be right both ways.”
Asturbar shook his fist beneath her monstrous chin. “Are you saying women are created of chaos magic?”
Those enthralling fire eyes whirled animatedly, as if inviting him into the stormy fires of her enigmatic existence. “Do you honestly believe I’m … I’m this thing which has never existed before in the Island-World?”
“A Chaos Shifter? I believe it, because I’m looking at one.”
Chapter 11: Dreams
IN the sacred lore of the Dragonkind, Shapeshifters were enshrined as creatures exhibiting two manifestations of one core soul. They could switch between their two forms at will, and Asturbar understood that they could be born and grow up in either Dragon or Human form, but that the powers began to emerge around adolescence – being four to six years of age for Dragons, and thirteen onward for Humans. Unlike Nyahi, however, Shapeshifters had a single stable Human form that aged and behaved in Human ways, and similarly their Dragon form. Injure one form and the other displayed a similar injury within certain bounds, such as injuries to wings or forelimbs showing up on Human arms, while tail injuries generally displayed on the buttocks, but this was not a perfect rule. Kill one form and the Shapeshifter died.
Many Shapeshifters believed in the ultimate purity of the Shapeshifter form – that their superior magical powers and fire-life fitted and destined them to rule, and that indeed, all Lesser Dragons excluding the protodraconic forms were ordained to become Shapeshifters in the glorious future ushered in by the Star Dragoness’ peerless gift. This worldview decreed that the primary purpose of Shapeshifters was therefore to usher in that future as rapidly as possible. Rule. Dominate. Procreate. Some might argue that the great Shapeshifter Lines thought about nothing else.
Surely the Star Dragoness, Empress of Herimor and worshipped by all, must have conceived a different vision? Something less … disturbingly adjacent to genocide? Asturbar just didn’t consider himself the kind of person to take up that argument with a deity.
So to Nyahi, whose Human form appeared to be pleasingly stable – and pleasingly pleasing in all sorts of extremely pleasing ways, Asturbar decided, growing hopelessly befuddled at one point during their conversation and deciding he should have to examine the crystalline formations in order to recover his poise – while her draconic form was emphatically the opposite. Well, it was aesthetically attractive with lethal overtones, if that made any Isles sense at all.
She was not entirely content with Asturbar’s hypothesis, but declared she was content to fly with it for the time being. He agreed. For want of a pun, there were holes in his argument one could drive a Dragon through, with plenty of headroom and wingtip-room to spare. Take her ability to shift into protodraconic forms – the so-called dracoflora and dracofauna rife throughout Herimor and apparently absent North of the Rift. What happened to her brain during her time spent in those forms? Scholars posited an intricate, innate transition ‘map’ that allowed Shapeshifters to accurately assume their target form. What if said target form had no brain? Or, intellectual capacity so vanishingly primitive that it was inconceivable it could hold such an imprint? Why could she speak in some forms and not in others? Why could she semi-control certain transformations, more by luck than by design, while she was trapped in others until such a time as some kind of instinct took over and completed the changeover?
Asturbar had to laugh at Nyahi’s reaction to his suggestion that her actually possessing a brain was a debatable point. She flickered through a dozen or more crystalline Dragon forms apparently related to the magic alive in the cavern, before reappearing as her Human and trying to slap him. He instinctively threw up a block; she whipped into a bracelet-like form some ten inches wide that in the blink of an eye enclosed his right-hand platinum-argentonium wristlet in a layer of pure yet flexible diamonds.
Magical.
Just when he thought she was voiceless once more, her new form sprouted a tiny face and muzzle and said, “Interesting. A new fashion line for men in wearable girlfriends?”
Asturbar wasn’t entirely sure whether to chuckle or blench. He did both. Holding her up, he tickled her … something … with his forefinger. “You are diamond.”
Exquisitely tiny jewel-fangs smiled at him. “Glad you finally noticed, helmet-head.”
“When I get home, I’m going to sell you for a fortune.”
“Outrageous!”
Her mouth tried to bite his thumb, but Asturbar was too quick. He said, “You know, if you can learn to control the chaos in that little brain of yours, you’d be a master of disguise. The unstoppable thief. The perfect spy –”
“Ignoring the inconvenient fact that, unlike someone I know, I am neither a thief nor a spy?”
“How can any creature so beautiful stab me with such vile accusations? I can definitely see myself putting you to work when we get back. You know, ornamental pot-plant, maybe a pretty footstool or a superb jacket of living silvery-blue – ouch!”
“Back off, boyfriend,” purred the creature. “This form has
claws, as I’ve just discovered.”
“Awfully clever of you,” he sulked. “So, where in the Island-World of ‘I’ve never been there before’ do you think this form comes from?”
The bracelet gaped at him.
“I know. I’m starting to think that your chaos magic may somehow describe or be driven by a repository of possibility. I mean, every single one of your configurations is a viable form of life, isn’t it? Or you’d be pretty much dead right now.”
The diamonds continued to look flabbergasted.
“So, pray elucidate for this poor, flummoxed soldier, from where exactly you are able to draw the intimate knowledge of potential life-forms which you have never seen, thought about or even imagined in any sort of detail? Or do you just make up life itself as you go along?”
When she made no reply, Asturbar whispered, “Are you Fra’anior’s own daughter perchance, Nyahi?”
Apparently, diamonds could gasp, turn pallid and faint.
Asturbar sat down very slowly upon an octagonal meriatite deposit, and stroked the bracelet comfortingly. He had just managed to frighten himself quite thoroughly, never mind Nyahi. Discussing the fabric of life itself was deeply disturbing territory for an infantryman, but he was not so naïve as to ignore the implications. If anyone else came to similar conclusions about her powers …
